On Understanding Joel Olsteen

To rise
lift your tongue,
that fiery tenant of the heart,
and sing down walls
that envy Man to splinters,
chink out the Cornerstone
but smile His work to see,
call the real Babel dubious
because it left them shattered,
and above all
ask for money.

On Constipation

Drop me evil offal ardor,
opal gleaming dark and
harder
by the moment.

On Understanding Capitol Punishment in Mundane Things

More or less I understand:
That governors' propensities
unto their proclivities
render them prodigiously
responsible
to prolepsize proportions
of justice, that apportioned
proficiently
punishes evil permanently
by ending it utterly,
and looks not unto prognostics.

On Understanding Blood in a Band-aid Factory

Mostly I don't understand
a woman's need to understand
nothing
yet emote everything.

On Understanding the Condemnation of Dead Babies

No more or less I understand
the silent tongues of little men
that never spun their father's wiles,
"It was the woman, spare the child
of innocence."
In federal seed the plant has grown,
and without youth has theived the oats
that wild and willed would have been sown
if good was done in Sidon.

On Understanding the Bellies of Snakes

I understand the serpent entered:
Who allowed surrendered will to mentor
all the cretinous height of Satan
and literally fell its lowly height.

On Understanding Trees That Don't Clap Their Hands

To no more or less has God given
each creation under Heaven
their respective allotments of the curse.

On Understanding Grace in Damnation

No more or less I understand
the finitude of all the damned:
ennobled
(but unto struggles).

On Understanding Blamelessness

Oh serious Heaven,
fullness of righteousness,
judgment and sight;
manifest Purity, shadowless Light,

Spare me not
any of the consequence of curse; but
deliver too the utter blessing,
the utter best from justest worst;

For I in Christ have
suffered all; each moment
rest in righteous rest.
Oh sated God,
who knows propitiate Christ.

Understanding Federal Headship, Seminal Seperateness

No more or less I understand
borned-disposition governing man:

From Adam sown, his fruit apportioned
to garden soul in full proportions.

A seed, a stock, a fruit, a loaf.

Children, children, seeds of leaven
baking unto Hell by Heaven;
rising since the Fall.

Damn! do i love boxing

She took a shot with a kiss,
like a swing and I missed
the dodge like a man
and fell.

Significant Other, oh my lord

At times, like the psalter, so too do I know "My lord says to my lord." --Just talk to myself. And not so messianic that way though. To say, I am. Not He. To counsel myself as I counsel myself. 

I my lord.

And with governing dispositions of demons and habits and spirits and wishes. With filibustering tenacity, lazy rhetoric, and honed congressional honors, I behold in me lord stalwart. The old man. James Strom Thurmond. One deadly wise murderous Patience. The long incumbent. The elected stated of mind prevailing. The golden oldie. Still spinning. Getting dialectic play.

Behold in me: The arguer for the importance of my impoverished penis.

My lord is a whirlpool made of boa constrictors, whose path is straight unto eventually choking; unto I am weakened; unto goodly suffocation; unto resignation; unto…

I am fallen. Hard as Abel’s face into the rock, fast as Cain’s arc unto it. From risen ecstasies I land depraved. The heights I knew deflated as the corpse of a child to the teeth of scavengers. I am pools of blood in the pigs' hollow. I am the fog as it disappears from lips.

Oh my lord.

First Morning

Morning after, "If she had any strength at all she would shatter into tears. Banished or no, some small part of her had clung all night to the irrational hope that, come morning, they might be allowed to return. That the awful night was just a warning. But with each heavy step she grows more certain: it wasn't a warning. This isn't a lesson. This is life. "

On grapes after starving across a desert, "The vines clamber around the bare boles of taller, branchless trees, and the clusters of fat green grapes hand down like breasts, like testicles, like anything that promises life, continuation, eternity."

On regret, "The Garden lingers like the faint odor of a long-dead flower; like the remembered scent of a lover. A vacant despair that rises each morning like the sun. Predators dog their steps, heavy with threat."

When the first winter comes, "a steady wind bows through the valley like a malevolent breath. The water turns to stone."

~Fallen by David Maine

Kafka was the Rage

I stood in the kitchen and painted
Across to your living room window,
Smushing all the planes together
Into foreground, light, and color; the sinews
Of wood running straight to the weather
Behind the glass;
They were a singular thing.
There, a God fearing sky filled gaps in the
Scratches the couch had made the times
We'd pulled it out to do what we'd oughtn't;
And the rising flood was falling
Towards us, together with the rain,
Washing the floor out the window
That was suddely a door of restoration.
And in and in, all of it came storming,
As out and out, all that dirty whoring went
Pouring into the knotty arms of a willow,
Hiding them in her hair on a very distant horizon.
But that was just a picture I was painting,
We're both dirty baby.
That's just the way it goes.

Pamplona

In a world where expressionism and existentialism run side by side as thoughtlessly as bulls down those famous corridors in Pamplona; in such a loud place as our own minds, where so many rushing options come so fast and all of them call themselves truth; in that pressing din that so often and dangerously charges through our minds' corridors towards a spiritual senselessness which often chases us further on into hurt, the provision of such forces as Jesus over the raging waters, the rapture of the saints from the dead, and the contrary unified din of angels' trumpets from the round earth's imagined corners blowing as those same saints arise; the provision of these things finds me caught, still, clear, safe, lucid, and lifted amidst the cloud of the bull rush.

bacchus is a liar

QUICKLY pass the social glass,
Hence with idle sorrow!
No delay—-enjoy today,
Think not of tomorrow!
Life at best is but a span,
Let us taste it whilst we can;
Let us still with smiles confess,
All our aim is happiness!

Childish fears, and sighs and tears
Still to us are strangers;
Why destroy the bud of joy
With ideal dangers?
Let the song of pleasure swell;
Care with us shall never dwell;
Let us still with smiles confess,
All our aim is happiness!

All is not well at the well

There was one daughter fair 

at the well. In the day light 

a wolf came.

You might recognize the story, 

it goes all the same.
It's no surprise

The whole thing sucks,
thought there was water there;
and nothing of sort,
she's dry and she's speaking out.

At hungry boys come for church-going girls 

when they've finished with the others,
"It's not my fault, born church-going
and pretty, and, today, wanting of a ride.

The whole thing sucks,
thought there'd be water there.
Nothing of sort;
I'm dry & I'm freaking bored.

Smart and pretty, so pretty, 

so pretty much bored,  
from pews that would keep me
to do, do only sitting.
So, I go out instead.

And the whole thing sucks,
thought there was water there.
Nothing of sort,
I'm dry and I'm freaking bored.

So, I'm going out to get wet.

Dogs, no, wolves is how they hunt me,
like a plump little ewe, 

'little you; you're so cute.'
They'd date me, would to rape me
and keep me away, anyway,
way from the pews.

So, I've weighed out the tensions
of heart strings so untaut, 

so untaught
and reason to go to the wolves.

And the whole thing sucks,
thought there was water here.
Nothing of sort,
so dry and so freaking bored.

So, I'm staying out late,
and maybe I'll get laid
or cut open,
but I'm going out, 

out, out, out, 

OUT to get wet!"

a start, perhaps, or an end or last tuesday

It was that loud kind of rainy, middle of July. Just the thing our parched midwestern city stayed up the extra hour for. She moaned under the touch reacquainted, like a monogomous wife her buisness-gone now returned mate. Windows were smudged with noses far past the noses' bedtimes. BANG! Sychronous beating hearts. A second smudge. Silence creshendoed to metzo forte droning, "pitter-patter, pitTER-PATTER," as equilibrium returned from the first smudges' leaving. The second grew in expectancy of the impending flashbang, nature's orchestral leitmotif: thunder. All across the city this was happening.

But I, I was displaced. Where everyone, myself included, had been near combustion under god's great magnifying glass and ought welcome the wet as the city did: howling, everyone had not gained and lost all since Tuesday. So, be damned, the children, the city, and the rain.

Polite

Francis gets a coloring book once a year from her grandmother when Mother and two of her cousins ride the train across Wyoming to Iowa's middle.

Julie is older than Katy. Both are younger than Francis though old enough to be said that they are hardly polite girls. Being polite is very important as Grandma always reminds the three on their outings. On the trip, Francis tries to play games her cousins might like to play and tries to share her coins and ponies, but Julie tells Katy that Francis is autistic and that that is the polite way to say a retarded person.

Francis is 37.

She wears a buzz cut in the summer months because that's how Howard, her dog, wears his. Grandma covers it with bonnets or handkercheifs, this will cover that, Franny, she cooes in an exemplary polite voice. Grandma is stuck a bit in her ways: that proper girls have pretty and long hair. But Grandma also has a buzz that she happens to cover with a pretty and long wig. Francis has seen the buzz and announces it with enthusiasm at the store and market and pretty much anywhere the two are together just how pretty grandma's hair is and how it's just like hers underneath. Grandma always blushes and laughs, oooh, Franny you silly doll. Oh, Franny. Then, they buy a coloring book.

Inimical Vicissitude

I saw her. Tonight went out. History silenced, time faded; there wasn’t night, just happening. The piano was hot; he wore white and black and black, slicked hair on white skin. No distraction that way, the piano was our focus. Not her and I--“our”--the sixty winos proper and I, sixty dulled, dimmed senses saw her; but, I saw her. She wore red, same as the wine. Crayon box burgundy, she wore red; but, I saw her. I saw in her. I saw into her. I saw her.

I saw her moments as building bricks. I saw her bricks built Keroac’s dark castle. I saw cyclical spires. I saw higher and higher the tower trap. Barred, I saw her, unduly. I saw honest, simplistic and personal contrition at the sad, greater human condition; I saw fuming in a softhearted daughter. I saw her soft, ready for any and many; I saw her diaphragm taut in a dharmic belly carry the tune of a love all, vacuous Zen melody.

I saw her. There was a piano, winos: vapid chatter. But, I saw her. I saw in her. I saw into her. I saw her.

Make up the Breakdown

I’m giving up fortitude. I’m breaking down bastions. I’m interested in anything of sustenance crumbling. This is a compromise. I resign the princess. Take the land, my life, my costume, and my gold. Here’s my hand to hold. If it takes an army to get inside or just a sword that’ll be fine. For the amplitude, it’s sickening. And my countenance is fading. I see it quickly hardening back to the world, wandering thick-skinned with empathy. Pull the callous, I understand you’d soften this man. Come over anytime. I’m buying. I’m vying for your mind. I’m giving up fortitude. I’m breaking down bastions. I've been compromised. And I resign.

The Falling

The careful lover, barefoot and fallen,
Barely hit the door
Before the worry of his acrobat trapeze,
Spinning above the world,
Seeing all the smiling faces
As he's reaching for the girl
To pull him up,
Comes crashing down
As the gravity of being a fool.

The rest from here is all unclear.
This is as far as he's come.
So in cryptic penned letters
To her without a "from,"
Never given for fear
Of setting up skyscraper tall,
And reaching for the girl
To pull him up,
Comes crashing down
As the gravity of being a fool.

both of us will feel the blast ~Waterdeep song

We’re both dirty, baby,
That’s just the way it goes.
We’ll try to cut the fuses off
Before everything blows;
And if it blows and both of us
Are standing real close by,
Then both of us’ll feel the blast
And both of us’ll die;
But dying’s overrated,
It’s a ticket on a train;
And as long as I can hold your hand,
I’ll know that I’m still sane.
Maybe I’m an idiot for thinking
That that’s true,
But I believe that Jesus knew what He was doing
When He gave me you.

Lately I’ve been wondering,
What are we gonna do
When we wake up in the morning
And it’s just me and you?
Cause we ain’t never done this thing,
But I guess that’s how it goes—
You breathe deep as it comes to you
And hold tight when it blows.
And if it blows and both of us
Are standing real close by,
Then both of us’ll feel the blast
And both of us’ll die;
And dying’s underrated,
It’s a ticket to the feast—
The one we’re all invited to,
From the greatest to the least

I hope we sit together
When Jesus serves the wine,
So I can look into your eyes
When I taste it the first time.
And I know, there’s no secrets
When you’re sitting at that table,
But I believe we’ll smile real knowingly
When we read the label,
And it says, “Passion sacrificed
To keep from going crazy.”
We’ll tip our glasses to the Host
Who used to look so hazy
And drink it down all sweet and slow,
And slip inside His mind,
And realize as it goes down
This is communion wine.

Asprin

before you read this one: willow trees, if you peel the bark, boil it into a tea, and drink has a quality that of asprin. So, that in mind, convalescing,


Careful to walk where he shouldn't,
He left the forest for a tree.
She a willow weeping,
Steady and flowing, drooping silently.
If you cut her she bleeds convalescing
From an ardent tap that in her,
By the strip of her bark, drips unfeigned
Water on the weary trip,
That fills each cup abundant with cool,
As she calms with shade
For each sojourning in the shadow
There, beneath her reaching,
Tired and sleeping there, beside.
He is tired and sleeping there, beside.

jessica pharo

Intending to see what he should,
He set sail on a wing to the sun.
She was a sparrow counted
By the hand of God, set soaring and falling
In turbulent skies, wind burnt and singing,
“Arise, arise, we will rise above this.
The earth she is falling away.
Arise; arise to the face of God,
Through the night to the dawn and out past the sun;
Past the circle of dawns always falling,
And setting our watches to sleep in the dark.
We will rise; arise. There the air holds no poison,
There we breathe no more lies.
Let us glide, the earth she is falling,
Let us rest, she is fading,
She has died,
We arise to the morning-forever.
Our eyes they are brightened.
The breeze it is gentle.
His face it is steady,
Counts us in His sky.
Arise; arise, the earth it has fallen away.”

Weather And A Swear.

Fall lingered well into November before it fell abruptly into seven inches of insulation that just now, January fourth, melted away to still-green yards with a week of mist and rain. An ambiance that of Seattle right here in Iowa’s middle. Clouds sat heavy as old man winter plopped that lazy keister of his right down onto this Midwestern city of ours and sweated that dismal, thick, and damp behind through our new year festivities, switching cheeks to show the moon or sun but only for a moment. Some call it global warming, I just think he’s getting lazy. He and Mother Earth haven’t done it in years.

Ahem,

Hey, sometime
When you're possessing of your unabashed capacities
Would you tell me your life?
Because I saw it in you once as a fulcrum
Forces; pressing into lives and lifting up their eyes
A little nearer to the unknown skies
Where you seemed to spend your time
Gaining weight and eating heartily from the tree of life,
Drinking plentifully wine and levity from the divine?
Oh, anytime,
Would you spare a very heavy line?
Because we're a little passed balancing, here,
And you've been lying there supine
Working bedsores and attenuating and I'm sinking.
Resting in this life is fine,
For you,
But what you had I want to weigh on mine.

Talk honest to me like you used to :::

Let's fight till one of us falls,
Words and stones and sticks,
Knives and knuckles all.
We've built the great compromise,
A brick at a time,
Till it met the sky tolerant,
And we've nothing left to say.

Either swing or I'm jumping
Back whence we met.
To the rocky depths
That spired jagged pricks
To soften a natural daughter
To get hit by hitting bottom,
And stick it out harrowed

In humble perspective,
As she climbed higher,
Met a carpenter's son, and conspired
To talk honestly--let us fight
To speak worthily--till one of us falls
To love truth and loveliness
And not surrender unto silence.

Dinner and the Doctor

Current mood: there is nothing good about virginia woolf at all.

It has not so recently come to my attention that I am absolutely unclear the majority of the time. Especially when I'm writing/existentially blabbing and lost somewhere. It's not because I'm especially smart that I'm consternated continually. Consternated is exactly constipated but with thoughts. I think it is because I have poor eating habits that I am frequently both. Onward from those two bits the following is a titled, Dinner and the Doctor. –A true story of Wednesday’s events. That is exactly what it is about, my actual dinner yesterday. Yesterday being the day I also went to the doctor. Proceed my faithful.

Dinner and the Doctor

Spinach leaves on moldy pumpernickel. Squeezed vegetable dip right from the container. There’s a glob on the middle of the bluest part of the bread. Covered it all with fiesta cheese. Ate it over dirty dishes still in the sink. Lights in the kitchen were off the whole time. What a joke. –And a gross one at that. Doctor says, “You lost five pounds.” He also says I’m healthy. Also says I’m piqued. If he only knew…

And know you know some things.

this is why I didn't make it over last night guys

So I pulled a Riley with a twist of Graeme last night. I got out of the bath about 9:30pm intent on homeworking it when "AGHAST!" I am dripping with no towels. These bath mats sure are plush, thinks I, bet they'd hold alot of water. And then I roll over naked and dry at 7:30am late for class, hit my head on the toilet, and scribble that homework done.

Such is 22.

Here's a little irony thrown in. Yesterday I didn't pass a skill which means i had to do it again today to pass. The skill was making a bed. So, the teacher says, I bet you made the hell out of your bed this morning. Huh, I responded.

Oh bother.

A Smoke, or DavidGraemeRileyChas

March's lion roared fire & sulfur first from scratched matchsticks
Buried deep into bourbon soaked cherries
Dipped amid brothers' candlelit conversation, thick and intermittent
With dark Irish thirst.
Smoked under a growing haze,
Drawing love and generally exhausting malaise
Into one cumulus pall looming,
Apposed to individually bearing,
They mingled each united bearing, airing
Momentarily burdened sharing, hearing, bearing
In the dissipating pain and plume.

Remembering

We were gentle rain
Out there in the meadow
When the night came down
And our hearts were bear
As our clothes
No I won't forget you now

We were driving snow
Blind for every reason
We were souls and leaves in the Fall
Let go of the world
As our home
No I won't forget you now

We were nothing at all
And for no reason
Rain and heart, blinding snow
Leaves and souls, bear and all
In the meadow
No I won't forget you now

Then it all set fire and we dined
On the sun with the Maker
We were ants, king and queens,
Never thirsty, or hungry,
Or small
No I won't forget you now

Purity, Bagshot, And J

I want truth no matter the cost, no matter the dirt and grit and itch and sting, no matter the journey daily lonely and straight away from or contrary to my accepting and vain current contemporaries. I must, or I shall die unhappy, have sustenance, firm foundation under an honest firmament. And thankfully, I am standing on, walking towards, eating from, and basking in underneath the blazing sun of truth. Praise God who gives it from his infinite wealth and has given me some to journey and share with for some times with like souls.

Are you with me, to my right or to my left? If not I want you, if so give me your burden when you tire and keep walking, foraging ahead for your own sake, appreciating and utilizing what we have for whatever time we've together.

Hopes and Dreams and Greasy Farted On Memories

I want to open up the floodgates
Of inhibition, drench the living
Room in tears and drown.

I want to rise,
Float up and up, and burst
Out of this salty, second story apartment
Through broken windows
On shards of glass and honesty,
Gasping for breath
On down to the river.

And, I want to bathe
Our bleeding egos
In the stream there
That leads to an ocean
In its infiniteness and melt all
The muck and dirt and blood and history
Off and evaporate

Into a thousand worthy conversations,
Peaceful in a cloud somewhere,
Heavy about the heavens,
And rain down on our happy, fertile, and growing
relationship.

The end,

Beet Red, A True Story

They sent me home
From nursing school
Today
For being late

That's fair
Then
They had me drug tested

Said it was
Out of character
For me to be
So foolish

That's supposedly
An honor
They just "had to cover the bases"

For my $79.90
I peed beets
Because that's
What I had for dinner last night
Instead of crack rock salad
And liquor

Red stinking urine
I'm sure
That made them leery

That's really
Going to help
-That you're clear
She said
And I want you to
Get counseling

Monday morning
I'll be psychologically
Assessed by a community college

Stating The Obvious

Man, it's a burgeoning spring green out the window in the underbrush of the woods. The elder trees are yet barren, though. No birds, because it's raining today, Resurrection Sunday...

And I hurt. Feels like winter inside, barren and all the rest of the emotions; or like desert, dry boned and thirsty. Where's this new life, new growth, this turnover of the spritual seasons from the death of my fall?

I'm not trying to be coy comparing nature and myself, I could only be so lucky as to follow the Creator as perfectly as His natural world. Clever or coquettish aren't AREN'T ok right now, not when I'm so sure of my position under God when I speak to Him. I am His creature.

That's what I was telling Him a few minutes ago on the porch. Then, the rain stopped. The birds started. I think the trees were lit differently. And there was peace.

Prayer is so important. Today it was resignation. Resignation wasn't really a struggle. Today, it was more like a statement of truth or lifting the hands from my eyes so I saw myself clearly or stating the obvious... you get the point.

I am so awed by my Creaturehood under a Creator that has a relationship with me. What a joy to be known by Him and to know Him, to speak with Him and be heard, to be heard by Him and answered .

Easter Sunday

Bleeding, beating, I am breathing, thinking,
Seeing, believing that I am perceiving
The river and fishes, the green of the spring,
The motions of wind on the leaves, and the singing
Of birds in their chorus and nature alive,
Bustling and rushing to bring in new life.
This early hour of April IS Spring,
And a day I am able in mind to believe,
With ears to be hearing a world I conceive
To be moving toward something perpetuating
Toward some certain purpose, as this path through the wood
Through which I go walking a rambled path down
Into the mountain with natural sounds
Never heard, played to me, not one note in the symphony,
Never has God so conducted for me
That my soul and my heart and my sight and my feet
Be harmonizing in time on His woodland street.
So a part, so engrossed, so alive, so verbose
So I sang and the rain came, soaked me a toast.
Off a large leaf I drank, and I held my breath
And let it all out, thanking God for this test
Of mind firing, heart beating, air in my chest
And volition, sweet human seat of my own disposition
Then I, the me, in my own autonomy yeilded up humbley contritant
And danced muddy, and drunk
Full in the woodland spirit, I sunk
To my knees and I wept for ability
To stay in the scene, or in truth to say anything affirming,
Like You are the river rushing my stream
You are wind in my ears and the scream
Of wildcats, the songs of the birds
The mountain, the hill, all of my woods
In chorus...

But I couldn't.

Some Like To Think This Never Was To Happen; or, Progeny of A Fatalist

The magnolia tree's dead,
The blossoms fell from the tips of the stems
Like giant pink crowns off their wilted heads.

They used to be aromatic,
But one day of static from the source and they'd had it,
And fell to the ground in vinegar drafts
On the wind and rescinded their skin down and aft
And rotted in streams where it rained,
A glorious natural perfidious stain
Of pink, like a river no painter's contained
Yet. And it washed down the drain.

And the blame came and shamed them
For loosing their roots, rooted same then
As always had been,
From the trunk to the tip of each blossom headed stem.

For the truth is it always had been that this be,
From the birth of the bee, learning flight to the tree,
Spreading seed, feeding sweet needs of his own
Came the fertile touch, fore he busied off home.

From the making of the dirt, and the hole that was bore
From the rain, from the winds of an ocean meeting shore;
And the Sun that spun Earth at such a force
That gravity demanded that rain fell its course,
And bore there a divot in the dirt for a child
Now lost of his crown to a vinegar river wild,
So fatefully pungently rushing in style
Down the throat of a sewer, as God sat and smiled
At the scene he'd compiled before the Sun had its force
At the scene that'd transpired, and at the child that was born.

Rise You From The Grave And Speak, Tertullian

I call in a new testimony, yea, one which is better known than all literature, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications, greater than the whole man--

I mean all which is man's.

Stand forth, O soul, whether thou art a divine and eternal substance, as most philosophers believe if it be so,-or whether thou art the very opposite of divine, because indeed a mortal thing, whether thou art received from heaven, or sprung from earth; whether thou art formed of numbers, or of atoms; whether thine existence begins with that of the body, or thou art put into it at a later stage; from whatever source, and in whatever way, thou makest man a rational being, in the highest degree capable of thought and knowledge...

Stand forth and give thy witness...

Name

Been asleep for twenty two years
Dreamed a little thinking
Bout the shape it'd take
To make the word
That'd take my breath
And wake my rest
Didn't know that it'd be yours

Been taking it in for all my life
Real purposefully bout half that time
Bouts young and felt won
To held heart and silent tounge
But Oh, to speak the things I heard
As fire from this holy chest
To quench that only name upon my breath
Didn't know that it'd be yours

On Reading Books

Borrowed the feelings from deep inside
someone else's reeling mind,
To honesty, Salvations! Or vainity,
Or trepidations, Yea and even travesty,
and took them all upon me.

So what to feel another man,
empathy's no fools gem,
Or thorny prick from fragrant stalk;
the wasted miles I'd have to walk
in other peoples' shoes to walk.

Nay, walk cadenced to a tune in time;
Walk, because a better rhyme
is better put for marching to,
to the place that we're all going to.
So quickly, where are we going to?

First Night

Listen to the singing
Ringing courage, bleeding
Arrows--eyes and lips. The
Angles of an angel painting
Red, red, red resounding

See, see, see this heart exploding.
Your coping is salvation to us all
In the glourious awful this,
The mess of lamentation.

Fall and raise me, repaint,
Repent and change me. Oh contrition
Change me in a hazy bar with arrows.
Sweet daunting daughter
Of melody. Young bloody
Painter with hollowed eyes.
You are hallowed.

Truth Sayer

truth sayer
Category: Writing and Poetry

He never purged my tongue with fire,
No angel gave its breath,
And David never lent his lyre;
Nothing of the Heavens sired
Spoke. Oh, all of Hell, you quiet death
Envoke me not--as to tell a liar
Or some exalted fools shortness of his breath.

God of sight, Infinite Manifest, fire
Boils on my tongue to saith
The Son or grant to me that silent death.

--

I don't want to speak anything but perfection, The earth is round, sky's blue, God's great Gospel of Jesus Christ, mathematic equations of creativity and truth. God is perfect, perfect in sight and thus in knowing multifacetedly every true thing about truth. As Isaiah, I am a man of unclean lips, unclean in morality, unholy in nearly all the things i speak as truth--they all seem to fall short of the perfect thing to say. Perfection is possible, is doable; I am indwelt by the HOly Spirit of God, God. How now shall i live? --I want to speak truth. Hell is separation from God. Hell is silence to God and from Him. I want this not. I also do not want to speak someone elses words or my own as "some exalted fools shortness of his breath." I want truth or silence of Hell, so thus, "God purge my tongue."

Oh Spiritual Dog

I am a single man, endowed by the spirit of God so gracious, full of peace and happiness for that reason alone.

I will not lie. There are remembered pleasures and there will be more in this world that have spent my time, have tripped my emotional trigger fired and shot me to smile. There are nerve endings that I've only the appreciation and awe to say have left me shocked. I will not lie, I remember.

In fairness to my conscience though, I have only been unhinderedly happy, that is to say, without any soulish disappointment when my joys, my experiences, my pursuits of emotion and touch were intimately entwined with that Eternal Divine Spirit who resides within my members so silently and passionately.

That same Spirit you have if you are His. So silent and passionate is His stay, His humble wait for our adherence to His lead. So soft is His holy, expectant, POWERFUL, whispering voice to we insolent medium who, though we are equipped to "see, do not perceive; and hear but do not understand; and who's hearts are hardened." And so it is that I thank God we have each other.

For we have the same Spirit who grants us many of the same thoughts and same insights and has granted us all the same truth from His same revelation; our experiences are vastly different though very much the same when all is put to parts. You've been given voices as I to speak, and on many occasions have not delivered me, your brother, a fellow heir in this grace of life to cheap living, inadequacy, and anything that isn't peace and fullness and truth.

I love your rebukes, your words, your friendships; more than that, I benefit from them. Thank you. I was reading Montaigne yesterday when I decided I didn't like him all that much, but I did benefit from him as well this one bit from a section called, "On Liars." It read, "better is the company of a dog with whom I am familiar than a man whose language I cannot understand."

And with that I leave you all,



If you are one born again to new life in the Spirit through the asking of Jesus for it, we have the same Spirit that we've receive upon salvation, we speak the same language. Thank you for those of you not being as foreigners to me, or worse as mongrel dogs, but peers under truth in the same Spirit. My love to you all,

Nice To Ramble About These Things

Jesus Christ truly is the Way the Truth and the Life. And what a life it is that I possess in Him through every bit of the fullness of His holy life in brotherhood to man, each drop of blood as my sacrificial atoning death, and the whole reality of His resurrection from the dead to New Life as my Salvation and Advocate and Hope with God who is Holy and Just and has spared me not, as a Judge, any of the consequences of curse but has delivered me to the justest worst of my humanity in that sacrificed body of Jesus; who doesn't stop there but in His extent of killing Jesus on one side, gives to me life and vitality to that same extent as Jesus' resurrection on the other--that is to say completely in both.
And that, my friends, is amazing. And I am thankful.

Falling

I've fallen many places but, right now, I'm not sure where to. I'm aware of the falling and unable to understand it or gain a sense of control about it. Decartes spoke of methodical doubt. Is it methodical doubt, the stripping away of every certainty but the undeniable truth of my descent. I feel the force of gravity and the breeze, so I definitely know I am alive, which is good; and I am falling speedily; but, as to the rest of my senses, they are blind, deaf, unintelligibly unaware, and useless for the discovery of directionality. I hope it's not to a pile leaves with a thousand kinds of red and orange shades of demons, I hope it's not to that Fall of Hell that Milton so fearfully described. I hope it's not to such a Lake of fire, to that pit with an unholy crash down around me, where my splintering is that of the chariots and body parts of Pharo's army those eons ago.

On Praying

Full moon arisen
under much derision.

Low in the Heavens
a sentiment beckons.

A prayer is reckoned;
a lame arrow shot.

With the speed it is moving,
through particles pushing
and pulling, and the whole
thing not starting or going
as smooth as it should,

it's not going to make it.

Orb naked in night,
in the sky full of night,
lend a drop
from a prick of an arrow
of the blood of the Heavens;
a prayer from a sparrow
aiming celestially,
again, at thy sights,
from terrestrially
falling.

On Aphorisms

All sorts of reflections of this nature pass through my mind. For, as I grow older, I regret to say, the detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting ahold of me.

In the morning the children would be fatherless, the mothers widows, and men cold and stiff. Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest even as it did eons before we were and will do eons after we have been forgotten.

Yet, man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains; his name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine tops on the mountains. The sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space. The thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today. His passions are our cause of life, the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends. The end from which he fled aghast will surely over take us also.

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard specters, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having been can never die, though they blend and change and change again forever.

All sorts of reflections of this nature pass through my mind. For, as I grow older, I regret to say, the detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting ahold of me.

Pigs

I watched a pool of blood in the moon
Light up the pit of the hollow of mud
Where the pigs went
And little ones were told not to go;
But I know they go,
And I know why they go;
Because they hear in the day
What I heard by the moon,
What was seen in the fog
As it disappeared from invisible lips,
That in the ugliest quickness takes you
Squeeling off to sleep.

On feeling it tonight.

This bit's a part of a disjunct series of made up situations that i felt. But together they're supposed to mean doing stuff that people see, mostly loud stuff like comedy or exhortation, a lot of times is lonely and people generally don't understand that because it seems to be something very involved; but they're wrong and they don't know and they won't know until they experience it.


I watched the jester fall on his face;
Even gravity was laughing at the man's grace,
But the blood on his arm and the blood on his nose
Got me thinking about how these things go.

I watched him up, up on his knees,
Wipe the blood off his face to his arms on his sleeves.
Then, I watched the crowd, bored with the show,
Leave. And got me thinking about how these things go

Last night I watched the moon and his friends chase the sun
Like a flock of sparrows after a raven.
I watched one of them fall and explode.
That's how I'm thinking about how things go.

Seems all they ever do is forget;
So drunk off the cup of take all you can get;
And stumbling hard but falling slow's
How I'm thinking about how these things go.

And someday all of them'll fall;
And the lonely drops of blood,
Like the writing on the wall,
Will empty their souls,
And they'll know
What it's like
To know
What it's like,
Because they'll know,
Know what it's like
To be alone.

Going southernly and sour

From taking in a Summer flower,
Passed her flighty Springy hour
Standing fierce, a colored glower
Powerfully through the sun and shower;
To the wilting, waning coward
Fallen cytoplasmic tower;
Blocks and petals, all the dowery
Gone.

Returning to her Earthly bowels
As vinegar, stinking, wasted, foul.

The tree

Eternal life was in a Tree

I am the termites and hives and sting;
I am the bite of those beasts to splinters;

I am too, the dogged winter
Rasping, biting, monster, splendor;

I am the salesman, theiving vendor
Selling it to warm as tinder,
Firing, blazing, burning rendered;

I am the morning steadily sourced
Cutting slow my fickle course
Across the roots; I am the river changing,
Stealing footings, rearranging;

And when the leaning's easy with gravity
I am the space, a hole, a cavity;
I am on and on-days, high and low
Tidal erodings, daily slow;

I am the wind, howling angry,
And I ain't changed, but change everything.

Fun Ranting A Spell About Ownership And Guilt

It's Saturday morning, post-shower fun, but I do feel it. It's supposed to be

first stanza: extreme experience indicative of the worst of possibility of our misuse of the gift of life, the stealing of the innocence of someone else's gift of life;

second stanza: a natural inclination to blame someone other than one's self, and the need to have that discharge of stressful energy that accompanies the trappedness of guilt;

third stanza: the gift of life is just that: a gift, an inheritance, and we don't earn any of it, every bit of it in our breath, sight, and experience is gracious from a Source. The culmination of life, present moments, end on end, are, in each moment, freedoms we inherit and thus own. And of course, in being rich as we are, we can misuse the availability our riches afford for evil; and in this case there's a loose tie back to stanza 1, in the misuse the gift of having fingers and loving capabilities to the greediness of lust and stealing an unmarried woman's sexual innocence.

That's all there TO ME, but I understand if it's not picked up.


When the moonshine's as bright
As it'll get for the bright-eyed
Young man's fumbling
Fingers to stumbling
On up a younger one's
Quivering, crumbling, deeply asundered
Innocence,
What then?

Is it you or was it me,
Was it Adam was it Eve,
Or the devil in a snake, coiled up in poisoned hate,
Maybe Alpha and Omega bent on giving freedom
To such a vast estate,
With the devil as a date?

Or was it true that being loved
By someone so rich we could never earn a cent,
Got us greedy,
Stole our senses
Till we started needing
Something other than the grace
Of the light upon our Lover's face
To spend our breath
From out our lungs,
So we chose poverty and death
To break our innocences in theft?

A Love Poem

The rock and the stone
Arrested their silence,
Flesh unto dry bone.

No Moses--themselves struck
Themselves with violence,
From the clay and the muck.

Oh inanimate element,
Of boulder of dust,
Confined conglomerate
Broke ye dumb trust!

Explode ye through chest
of iron! Ye poured forth
in a watery address.

We cried out, an explosion,
Ejaculate exclaimate;
Shameless, but of utter compulsion.

"Oh liveliest angel
Not of spirit, of dust;
Oh light of all angles
Oh diamond," our must.

"Roar," Said The Scary Thing

The monster smoked dynamite. He lit the wicks with whole trees. Once, a country begged him to leave. As he left, he puffed acid clouds in perfect rings around the top of their mountain. Fire hissed from chapped lips as he hawked spittoon lakes numerous as his cavities, numerous as the discords he whistled through so many holes in the mean teeth that there were as much teeth as holes. Every breath was like a bad organ player. When he left, he stomped off avalanches, and it must have been forever before he disappeared.

Little was known of him. Nobody followed him off. It got around that someone, though, told someone their vagabond cousin got close enough to know the glistening, black flanks were slick and dripping as a tongue in an easy girl's mouth. Whatever that meant. "It was ugly, and he was scared," they said he said, "but he bore it. But he wouldn't again if he had the chance." And then, they said, the vagrant closed his eyes and shook. And died.

Poetry

Spit from the hip;
Signed it, "Your's truly,
Poetry."
Mother said, Wonderful.
Teacher said, It was punctuated incoherently.
Publicist hated it,
But folks were changed by it.
I wrote it. That was all.

Fodder

Cry our eyes dry as summer;
Cracks and blisters,
Sufferings in gone fathers,
Blame not sought or not there,
Because we're all aware
We all got burning problems
That in light of the present situation,
Were things that just happened;
And knowledge just dampens;
And objectivity's no solution;
And; And; fodder; father;
Fodder; father. Flame.
And there's no fault for a mother
To get a stepfather
For three young daughters
And a couple of boys,
Especially when he said,

I'm coming to get you,
I've come to refresh you,
I'm coming to pull you up
From the flame.

When he turned out a lair,
That was twice, and it was real hard
To approach a third
Who we couldn't see, saying
Suffer not, daughter,
The worry's only fodder,
Flames'll only get you hotter.
If it's not too much to bother,
There's my bucket and a rain cloud
To quench the suffering burn down,
Coming just as soon
As you get out of the way.

Because, I am coming to get you,
I've come to refresh you,
I am coming to pull you up
From the flame.

Confession, In Haiku

When sex and fire were
Youthful pools, he wading on,
Splashed 'round, sipped the deep,

Did not remember
The loss in stealing, and drained
The future floods; and,

Did not know then that
Depth, blindly, fully deep could
Pour from loving lips,

Flooding his bank on
Over her banks and her back;
And then, then to drink

From those oceans red
With womanly water—no,
But wine. Oh to drink!

He did not know then
What it is to be desert
And know of ocean,

That there's nothing fine
As the drink of the only
Woman you have loved.

Forgiveness Song

I'm a lost son of God on my way back home;
Gonna carry my burden from when I'm young till I'm old;
Gonna hold on tight to what it is that I own,
I'm a fool.

Gonna lie in wait in the crefts of the rock
For the devil to see me, for the devil to stop;
For that old serpant to speak what he talks,
I'm a fool.

Gonna run on off like a scaredy cat
Screaming, Father, Father; Oh, Daddy Dad.
Please tackle the lion that I got mad
When I's a fool.

But He knows much better and he knows His hand
Gonna tie my fetters in a bountiful land
Where I'm tied to the trees with the fruit and the breeze
I can drink.

So, I'm running on back to the bondage of
Those honey dripping trees I burned because
I went on off and followed me
Like a fool.

But the path is long and the way is steep
And the devil He keeps following me
And I worry hard cause I don't believe,
I'm a son.

And I go to the hill and I go to the wood
And I cross on back crossed the places I stood
In a younger day in an older way
Like a fool.

Come home, Son's there but the misbelief
Has aged and I am walking weak ,
And it's hard to breath with atrophy
Of the heart.

In death, I ask the Lord to hold me up
And pull me to his dining sup
Like a prodigal, like a coming home
For a fool.

And he answerers me, Like always, son,
And didn't push the years I'd won
For the love of running in the hunt
Of avoiding rest.

And I rest in the arms of a happy God
Like a soldier home from the longest tour
In the barronest land with the deepest ghouls
And the fools.

And He sees my eyes and He lifts them up
And the deepest part of the banquet cup
Is the gift of peace in the shackled feet
I tie.

And we go on off and don't remember
The cold and hate of my December
As we plant and grow eternal seasons
Of Spring.

Some Mental Health professionals deny God, would say Man has no responsibility to God because there isn't a God, and would classify behavior not as sin but as antisocial or as a result of anxiety or historical conditioning or chemical imbalance, etc. This sort of clinician would deny that a "felt separation" from God could be an actual state of man but instead might admit it was a perception that could be painful, stressful, and anxiety producing. They might encourage medicine, therapeutic discussion, sleep, or any number of interventions to reach a clinical outcome which would find the man in a state of lesser-felt guilt/separation/anxiety/stress. They would not encourage belief in sin.


Wryly smiled the early bird, A rational good morning to you.

If it helps to ease the tense dawn of responsibility,
There's inclement conflict, in the roots of personality,
Consisting of inclined, self-destructive aggressing.

Wild?
--No, you are extravert, irritable in agreeability;
You are socialite, rarely conscientious, and neurotic slightly.
Be aware, there is peace in scientific form;
Be aware of inclined obligation
As explanation that nothing is random,
Haphazard, accidental or unrelated;

No, it's all related
To a growing past and the future
As an unrelenting tug of war,
Where id is bustling and Ego's eating sand
With burns on his hands,
Crumbled under the pressure

Awake sleeper, there is peace in the scientific form
Peace, that in the roots of personality,
In the roots of personality there is conflict,

While sipping arsenic in his coffee.
And crying stirred the sleeper's God.

Books

Top Eleven Life Changing Books
1) Pascal's Penses, Pascal
2) Kafka was the Rage, Broyard
3) Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
4) Screwtape Letters, Lewis
5) The World Next Door, Sire
6) Complete Works of John Donne
7) The Stranger, Camus

8) Fear and Trembling, Kierkagaard
9) The Hapless Child, Gorey
10) The Man who was Thursday, Chesterton
11) Brave New World, Huxley
12) Burning in Water Drowning in Flame, Bukowski

That top half comprise books that gave new ideas that changed why I am who I am, the second served more poetic ends in saying things I felt and couldn't articulate or by feeding me full of absurdity--which by the way, I LOVE.

Men of Greed

A ship sailing on a steady ocean,
heavy metals gleaming black
by the light in bough of the thing,
sinks poorly with much screaming.

Except for the treasures
that bury the sailors,
God's wind had carried them.
A distant docks' lariats
pulled their chariot
o're the breakers,

---

but offward cut the troubled men,
their lust to o'retaking,
which freed to law of sea
they saw that freed-to-law succame them.

Anon: the sounds of deep to deep,
the only breathes there those of greed.
Of money, metal, boards and sail,
of wreckages amidst the gale,
of gasping water, tears, and air,
of knowing well departed sails
that forward pushing, pulling swells
the heart so free from cares
upon the ocean streets...

Of these things, now, there was release.

And release,
release inspired the sailors to sleep.
And these are theirs, the calls to deep,
"Release, unto our sinking fleet.
Release, wake come, keep us from sleep!!"
and upward went the bubbled pleas
to pops atop the water.

And upward went the silent dreams
of lustful men in silent screams
as pops atop the water,
"Sovereign, in poverty,
pray Thee not this course.
Allow for us Jonah's impoverished remorse!"

The pops atop the water,
"Relent of this. Redeem!
And soberly, for love, repent of us.
Nay, will penitence.
And let no deadly Devil the benefits!
Yea, and e'en will breath.
Oh this, and see our change unto beneficence."

And these were theirs, the last of pops
before they stopped the sailors
evermore as those atop the water,
"Yes, sempre a chorus
of Sirens for us.
Yes, we will out do them."

.Pop ..pop. ...

Saturday Morning

Gate's narrow and the path is steep,
and he's so dizzy from the winding streets
and the options there that are there to meet
with such friendly faces and dragon teeth,
that sink so deep. They are calling,
but he keeps onward, out of control.
Just two lines there in the mountain snow.
His chest is hurting from a distant rope,
a lariot's burning, slipping hard on his soul.

In time he'll make it, he tells himself,
but then he's naked, cold, and crying for help
from a dragon watching and a pile of snakes
to singe his rope and poison his legs;
and to the years below, their warm open road
to catch his weary, frozen soul
in a million pieces like shards of glass,
in his last stand before he melts away.

Girls in Relationships

Does he love you tonight?
Did it keep you up till tomorrow?
How do you keep it all together, Babe,
counting all those damned dead sparrows by yourself?

You're by yourself
And you'll always be alone there by yourself.

You got your anger in the whitest little flame,
color of your ghastly, ghostly,
cowardly little game there by yourself.

You're by yourself
And you'll always be alone there by yourself.

The Devil and the angels got their promises to keep,
like you got your pity there
keeping you from sleep there by yourself.

You're by yourself
And you'll always be alone there by yourself.

You got your silence there in a violent little box
Opened it up to teach me a lesson;
Ain't you a sly little fox there by yourself now

You're by yourself, now
And you'll always be alone there by yourself

Pamplona

In a world where expressionism and existentialism run side by side as thoughtlessly as bulls down those famous corridors in Pamplona; in such a loud place as our own minds, where so many rushing options come so fast and all of them call themselves truth; in that pressing din that so often and dangerously charges through our minds' corridors towards a spiritual senselessness which often chases us further on into hurt, the provision of such forces as Jesus over the raging waters, the rapture of the saints from the dead, and the contrary unified din of angels' trumpets from the round earth's imagined corners blowing as those same saints arise; the provision of these things finds me caught, still, clear, safe, lucid, and lifted amidst the cloud of the bull rush.

Song I Hope Not To Mean When I'm Dead

When I get older and the angels come,
and I open my heart up at the top of my lungs,
and I sing and I scream,
and I whistle and hum,
flap my little arms,
and fly to the One
who gave me life, breath, heart

And the thumb
that I sucked,
I'll sink
down
to the bottom
of the drink
that I've drunk.

And oh, how I'd cry,
but I'll have been sucked dry;
And I'd throw up at all,
if it weren't for
all those deserts I'd drank
--Oh, the mountains I've sank,
in quick little handfuls
just to stand before
another bloody trouble.

So, I sink down
to the bottom now
of my cup, down
and I wonder how
I'm so
Sunk, down
to the bottom
of all I drunk.

A Quivering Leaf; or, a Halloween Story

Through the still and distant dark, in the early hour there's a moving power coming over the hill, a shrill cry of a crow. From an angry bill, the distance fills with its angry will.

A single leaf has stayed the night without his sleep. Yet awake, he tarries weak. And then the scream.--Coming is that moving awful thing. Of the night? He lasted on. The single leaf has kept, has held, and holding well has proved himself adept through atrophy that came and passed and brothers/sisters fell at last—their weaker numbers grown to mass of all, save himself there holding. Against that fate of gravity was only he left quivering. The single leaf so heavy hung, so held his grip--his song now sung, his tongue now old, his body weak. His tarry'd been so godly meek that should inherit he the earth and tree, but naught to him was this to be.

Anon:
Amidst the fog and uncut, holding, low-hung dawn that conduits the raucous shriek unto the leaning, naked tree, where, whether by mercy or by malady, to tempt or toss the tired leaf, with earless form he hears the sceam, whose forceless touch, like awful dream, wakes and shakes him in the scene ..to quivering, as it does me.
That distant cry like arrow nigh flies pierce-ed, screeching, aiming high upon the point of waking death at stem to branch. And, so resolves us, "So it be, if this is all that he or I can feel or see. And, if so here that hearing we the call of enemy should fall alone departed, so it be. So set our hearts and so congeal our souls to hold our earthly molds in one more stay amidst the black; against one more day's squalor-ed attack; amidst one more cackling of beasty's voice; and once more yield our souls in choice to kneel before Heaven gritting against devils—Ahh, what a choice!

Though resolved to yet uphold, we fear the fate of downward fall. Would into stealing eyes be pulled? Would I feed a belly already full, where heaping and golden there graven's the goal? Awakened teeth, a thousand strong, opened glad the weakening call of the beasty's single caw.

And though that earthbound Supper,
with his cavernous mouth
and cavernous hunger for his cavernous couch
to be full of supernally
fallen things,
so opens his cavernous ears
to the scream
of the ravenous
beckoning
of manifest
raven-oused
obscene gravitas.

And though, that suboscine
ilk of ill dignity, Gravity,
smiles such at the beckoning,
waiting through echoes
like arrows for the reckoning
of our fateful drop.

Yea, though we're quivering:
This promise we bring, 'In an early hour,
a moving power
will come over the hill,
coming through the still.'"

So the Supper and Quivering
continue listening
whilst echoes settle,
dark until
all is settled
dark and still.

In the early hour,
there's a moving power
coming over the hill,
coming through the still.

Through the heavy haze
of a thousand sprites
in demon shroud
remained from night,
as second night 'ore
the morning light
—as a ceiling,
there set upon the foggy air,

its residue to loom and loom,
till looming echoes once a tomb
become a tone
unheard, undone.

And every shadow of the sun
beneath its fog
rests darkly.
And when it does,
a something comes.

In shadows silent,
something shows,
something distance cannot know
yet, but shows
in shiftings, bad intent.

There croon creshendoes
in strengthed hum,
and something moves,
and something comes

from woody black,
so silent, tall,
and true as sin
in depth and all
darkness.

There the deadened cry
ignites the trees
to spark. Then fire
of winged beasts into the shroud
are darting in and down and out
they start there coming, coming down
in this direction
with the whispered sounds
for every horrid inch
of forward motion.

There, in the early hour,
there's a moving power
coming over the hill,
coming through the still...

Kafka was the Rage

I stood in the kitchen and painted
Across to your living room window,
Smushing all the planes together
Into foreground, light, and color; the sinews
Of wood running straight to the weather
Behind the glass;
They were a singular thing.
There, a God fearing sky filled gaps in the
Scratches the couch had made the times
We'd pulled it out to do what we'd oughtn't;
And the rising flood was falling
Towards us, together with the rain,
Washing the floor out the window
That was suddely a door of restoration.
And in and in, all of it came storming,
As out and out, all that dirty whoring went
Pouring into the knotty arms of a willow,
Hiding them in her hair on a very distant horizon.
But that was just a picture I was painting,
We're both dirty baby.
That's just the way it goes.

Understanding

No more or less I understand

the finitude of all the damned:

ennobled, yet unto struggles.

First Morning

Morning after, "If she had any strength at all she would shatter into tears. Banished or no, some small part of her had clung all night to the irrational hope that, come morning, they might be allowed to return. That the awful night was just a warning. But with each heavy step she grows more certain: it wasn't a warning. This isn't a lesson. This is life. "

On grapes after starving across a desert, "The vines clamber around the bare boles of taller, branchless trees, and the clusters of fat green grapes hand down like breasts, like testicles, like anything that promises life, continuation, eternity."

On regret, "The Garden lingers like the faint odor of a long-dead flower; like the remembered scent of a lover. A vacant despair that rises each morning like the sun. Predators dog their steps, heavy with threat." 

When the first winter comes, "a steady wind bows through the valley like a malevolent breath. The water turns to stone."

~Fallen by David Maine

Damn! do i love boxing

She took a shot with a kiss,
like a swing and I missed
the dodge like a man
and fell.

Tartarus Babble

 My troubles? Friend, the world is as big and as small as you allow yourself perspective. Is God God or isn’t he Lord of all, Master over it and Creator of it.

 Are my troubles mountains rising up beyond the height of birds that soar at such great heights. Are my great mountains of burdens and thoughtfulness beyond the heights of even heaven, where some godlike being dwells yet too small, so that they are past the heights of his mere sight. No, they are not. My troubles are not so. My God is not so. God is not so, has not so expressed himself.

 How has he expressed himself? Do I care. Will I respond. Yes or No. These are the real troubles.

 As the tower of Babel rose to its great heights, so are smaller still my problems. The pinnacle of the idolatry i craft in pensive arrogance and supposed confusions, its great height and all its supposed derived perspective is to God something he squints to recognize from the distant heaven’s perspective. And there he croons, “What is this speck he is building,” he says. 

 

 Friend, my troubles are exactly your troubles. --They are small. And worse, they are often other mens before us more genuine than us. And theirs were small in their times. Are we even loftier than they whom we borrow our supposed confusion from, those who laid cornerstones of babble?

 My troubles are as they are and as they’ve been. They are present as existense, as Adam was wrong and as Christ is throned righteously. As the Spirit fights within me to change me, so are my troubles within me fighting the Spirit. When this is known, it is no matter what the character and nature of my humanity, hamartiological propensities, or degree of calvinistic destination. For, it is true and clear biblically that I am to obey and am able to obey --because I am held accountable to do so unquestionably, “even unto bloodshed resisting sin.”

 It is more and more easily clear to me as I am honest, that I am, very simply, my trouble. I am fighting. I am babbling. I am creating heights of thoughtfulness that gain me pithy borrowed perspectives of no sight at all. And I am choosing to do so. This is no excuse. I am wrong and I, very simply, know it.

 Is there such a thing as a carnal Christian or will i burn in Hell? That is a serious question to ask at this time. Ask yourself. Determine yourself if you’d like to answer it with babble over theological impressions from the schools you’ve attended or prayer and pleas to God over verses like James 2 and the book of First John.

 My troubles are those of every man. My troubles are yours. The Spirit is power, God has perspective. God will not tempt you beyond what you are able. Be strong and faithful through your own blood spilt from your hand chopped off. Then continue to be strong and faithful.